My First Book of Poetry : Ink On Water

(C) Shubhrata Prakash

Releasing on May 10, 2015 at Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad.

The Sea

(c) Shubhrata Prakash

They say I am the sea

I get pulled by my father, the Sun

I get pulled by my lover, the Moon

I keep oscillating between the two.

They say I have no will of my own.

They say that’s the law of nature.

I can never be free.

I shall always be bound by the Sun and Moon

The churning rod in my own churning

Between the two loves of my life.

They say I am the sea

Always fickle, always whimsical

Always even hormonal

Sometimes I wax

Sometimes I wane

Am I really sane?

They say I don’t know my own mind

They say I can’t be left alone

That is why I am kept chained

To all my sea sisters

All kept linked together

Bound by the Sun and the Moon.

Of course, they are men.

They know their minds.

They know how to keep waves of women under control

Waves of infinite water….some of it even our briny tears

We - the sisterhood of the seas.

They say I am the sea

Okay that’s what I am.

But have they forgotten my depths?

Have they succeeded in binding me?

Can they ever capture my fist in theirs?

Ha..ha..ha..all they will have is sand

They can have some shells too

Crabs maybe?

But they can never have me.

My father and my lover may try to keep me in check

But when we sisters turn to our Mother Earth

She cannot see our plight

She quakes with anger and cries tears of lava

Can you quell the curse of a mother ?

No.

A mother gives her daughters so much power

That the energy scares all men.

Free of the Sun, free of the Moon

The sisters rise in rebellion

The sister seas rise so high that no man can control them

For they all run for their lives

To escape the tsunami of waves of our anger.

And when the anger dissipates

Man rues the day

When he called woman the sea

Ye men

Who think they control the seas

Through men like themselves

The Sun and the Moon

Never ye forget

That there’s Mother Earth too

Who sets her daughters free

So, when ye go mad with thy powers

Think of the Earth

And her free daughters.

(c) Shubhrata Prakash


(From "Ink On Water"......coming soon)

The River

The River

(c) Shubhrata Prakash

I am not a river

Bound by the corsets of muddy, sandy banks

I am not a river

Forced and confined to stay within the flanks

I am not a river

Admired in my babyhood for sprouting out of the earth’s womb

I am not a river

Fulfilling romantic fantasies when I fall in a spray like fresh blooms

I am not a river

People lusting after my youthful curves winding along valleys

I am not a river

When mature giving water, power– people their needs daily

I am not a river

When ripe just used by men for breeding

I am not a river

Trout and hilsa and rohu; and for crop feeding

I am not a river

Used and exploited; often bound and dammed

I am not a river

Often dirtied with garbage and sewage and shamed

I am not a river

Weighed down with bridges, tanks, steel; and with fear I shudder

I am not a river

My heart speared with boat oars and ruthless mechanical rudders

I am not a river

A burning place for rotting human flesh and even waste molasses

I am not a river

Where my lungs and breath are choked with consuming pyres’ ashes

I am not a river

Which is admired in youth and exploited in maturity

I am not a river

In old age distributed and thrown into the sea in obscurity

*******************************************************************************

I am not a river

I am a real woman

Yet why do I feel that

Our lives seem so common?

Everything a river faces, mostly I too face

So am I too a river, though a different race?

  

(c) Shubhrata Prakash

(From "Ink On Water".....coming soon)